New book review on Cairo360: Salman Rushdie - Joseph Anton: A Memoir

"On the 14th of February 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini sent Salman Rushdie a not so funny Valentine: a fatwa. The Iranian supreme leader found Rushdie’s portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad in his book The Satanic Verses offensive and thought it fair to declare the author an outlaw, inviting all Muslims to kill him in the honour of Islam. 

“You just need to lie low for a couple of days and let the politicians sort it out”, says one of the police officers that is sent by the British government to protect Rushdie on the first day of the fatwa. ‘A couple of days’ eventually turned into ten years of full police protection, being unable to set foot outside his house without meticulous safety procedures and constantly fearing not only for his own life, but also the well-being of his closest relatives." 

Read the full review here.